Thomas T. Ryan, 82, Was Executive and Teacher

Thomas T. Ryan, a former chairman of the Association of National
Advertisers and vice president of advertising for The Gillette Company,
died of cancer Wednesday in Edgartown. He was 82.

After serving three years with the 339 Fighter Squadron in the South
Pacific during World War II, Mr. Ryan joined McCann Erickson Advertising
in New York in 1945. As a vice president and account supervisor with
McCann managing many key account relationships, he resigned in 1961 to
join Cunningham and Walsh in New York as senior vice president. He later
joined its board of directors and ran the agency's account
management division.

In 1968 he left Cunningham and Walsh to join Gillette as vice
president of Gillette North America in a newly created position to
modernize its advertising and marketing of all the Gillette brands. Over
the next 17 years with Gillette, he built the company's in-house
advertising operations and coordinated the activities of each
brand's individual agency.

He became a strong voice in the industry through his involvement
with the Association of National Advertisers, which he also served as
chairman. In this position, he was instrumental in the planning and
developing the new Nielsen television audience measurement system,
called the People Meter, as the arrival of cable television in the 1980s
changed viewing habits. He also urged members of the ANA to resist the
growth of gratuitous sex and violence on television throughout the
1980s.

After his retirement from Gillette in 1986, he went on to teach
advertising and marketing for seven years at the Boston University
School of Communication and for two more years at the Budapest
University of Marketing Science in Budapest, Hungary. He also served as
chairman of the board of the Oldfields School in Glencoe Maryland for
three years.

Mr. Ryan was born in Bronxville, N.Y., where he was graduated form the
Bronxville School and went on to earn a BA in English from Brown
University in 1942. His 1951 marriage to Mary O'Brien of
Ardsley-On-Hudson ended in divorce in 1977. He married Jane Sebring
Herrick in 1997, and she survives him. His two children of his first
marriage, Ted Ryan of Great Falls, VA and Mary L. Ryan of New York City,
also survive him.